The French parliament moved Wednesday to stop telemarketers making annoying, unsolicited phone calls, with measures due to come into force in just over a year.Under the legislation, passed in a senate vote, it will be up to a company to prove that a call made on their behalf to an individual’s telephone was done so with the person’s express consent.The only exception would be when the company is calling to carry out an already-agreed contract.According to an October 2024 survey by French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, 97 percent of people in France have expressed irritation at the cold calls.Often the telemarketers use different phone numbers from different geographic areas as a tactic to place the calls about heat pumps, changing utility or cell phone providers, installing windows, or other transactions.The lawmakers, backed by the government, decided to erect a law against the cold-callers after seeing that a French service, Bloctel, meant to prevent such spam calls, was not working.One Frenchwoman, Lucie Kapfer, 43, said she got rid of her landline after receiving “several calls each week” from unwanted telemarketers.“But they continued on my mobile phone. Several calls a day, it was sheer hell,” she said.The French government was also concerned by how many of the calls were about arranging fraudulent access to publicly funded schemes, such as training programmes or subsidies for making homes more energy efficient.The law will protect “the more vulnerable people, the elderly, those who sometimes don’t realise that this harassment by telephone is only an entry point to massive fraud schemes”, said the minister for public accounts, Amelie de Montchalin.The law is scheduled to come into effect in August 2026.Companies “will have a year to organise themselves” to comply with the law, but after that “there will be no exceptions,” said the senator Pierre-Jean Verzelen, who promoted the measure.Spain, too, is looking at taking action against telemarketers. Its government last week said it wants telecom operators to block calls from firms not using a dedicated prefix identifying them as commercial callers.
